ESA Hopes for Sign of Life from Comet-Chasing Rosetta

12/30/2014 21:06:28

Europe's Rosetta probe is due to wake up from years of hibernation today, but scientists face an agonizing wait of several hours until the first signal reaches Earth and they can celebrate a new milestone in their unprecedented mission to land a spacecraft on a comet.... ...

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Google’s High-Tech Contacts Monitor Glucose Levels

12/30/2014 21:06:18

Brian Otis gingerly holds what looks like a typical contact lens on his index finger. Look closer. Sandwiched in this lens are two twinkling glitter-specks loaded with tens of thousands of miniaturized transistors. ... ...

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Arm Sensors on Humans Make Robots Smarter

12/30/2014 21:06:13

Using arm sensors that can “read” a person’s muscle movements, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have created a control system that makes robots more intelligent.... ...

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Engineer Finds Solution for Pesticide Drift

12/30/2014 21:05:02

It’s a problem that plagues farmers and haunts environmentalists: how to reduce pesticide applications and ensure they are used most effectively. ... ...

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Warming Causes Changes in Soil Microbes' DNA

12/30/2014 21:01:22

As scientists forecast the impacts of climate change, one missing piece of the puzzle is what will happen to the carbon in the soil and the microbes that control the fate of this carbon as the planet warms.... ...

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Lethal Injections are Based on Guesswork

12/30/2014 21:01:05

Ever since the time of the guillotine, doctors have been at the center of the death penalty. Joseph Guillotin, the physician who suggested the device be used in 18th century France, was actually against the death penalty – he hoped that a more humane method of decapitation would be a prelude to ending capital punishment.... ...

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Project Aims to Harvest Transportation Fuel from Methane

12/30/2014 21:00:39

A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory-led team hopes to engineer a new enzyme that efficiently converts methane to liquid transportation fuel.... ...

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Researchers Discover 3D Counterpart to Graphene

12/30/2014 21:00:16

The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene – the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon – promises exciting new things to come for the high-tech industry, including much faster transistors and far more compact hard drives. ... ...

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Powerful Method Finds New Drugs

12/30/2014 20:59:57

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have demonstrated the power of a new drug discovery technique, which allows them to find antibodies — relatively quickly and cheaply — that have a desired effect on cells. ... ...

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Hydrogel Delivers Medication on Demand

12/30/2014 20:55:37

Researchers at the Univ. of Delaware have developed a “smart” hydrogel that can deliver medicine on demand, in response to mechanical force.... ...

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